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Aid slowly reaching Haitians as desperation grows

Pushed to the far edge of
desperation, earthquake-ravaged Haitians dumped decaying bodies
into mass graves and begged for water and food Friday amid fear
that time is running out to avoid chaos and to rescue anyone still
alive in the wreckage.

The U.S. military brought some relief, taking control of the
airport, helping coordinate flights bringing in aid and evacuating
foreigners and the injured. Medical teams, meanwhile, set up
makeshift hospitals, workers started to clear the streets of
corpses and water was being distributed in pockets of the city.

But the task was enormous.

Aid workers and authorities warned that unless they can quickly
get aid to the people, Port-au-Prince will degenerate into
lawlessness.

There were reports of isolated looting as young men walked
through downtown with machetes, and robbers reportedly shot one man
whose body was left on the street. Survivors also fought each other
for food pulled from the debris.

"I'm getting the sense that if the situation doesn't get sorted
(out) real soon, it will devolve into chaos," said Steve Matthews,
a veteran relief worker with the Christian aid organization World
Vision.

“I don't think that a word has been invented for what is happening in Haiti. It is total disaster.”

Liony Batista, Food for the Poor

Time also was running out to rescue anyone who may still be
trapped alive in the many buildings in Port-au-Prince that
collapsed in Tuesday's magnitude-7.0 quake.

"Beyond three or four days without water, they'll be pretty
ill," said Dr. Michael VanRooyen of the Harvard Humanitarian
Initiative in Boston. "Around three days would be where you would
see people start to succumb."

An Australian TV crew pulled a healthy 16-month-old girl from
the wreckage of her house Friday - about 68 hours after the
earthquake struck. In a collapsed house, neighbors and reporters
heard a cry and found an air pocket: part of the top floor had been
held up by a cabinet.

"I could see a dead body that was there, sort of on top of the
cabinet; I could hear the baby on the left side of the body
screaming," said David Celestino of the Dominican Republic, who
had been working with the TV crew.

Although her parents were dead, Winnie Tilin survived with only
scratches and soon was in the arms of her uncle, whose pregnant
wife also was killed.

"I have to consider her like my baby because mine is passed,"
Frantz Tilin told The Associated Press.

As temperatures rose into the high 80s (upper 20s Celsius), the
sickly smell of the dead lingered over Port-au-Prince, where
countless bodies remained unclaimed in the streets. Hundreds of
bloated corpses were stacked outside the city morgue, and limbs of
the dead protruded from crushed schools and homes.

At a cemetery outside the city, trucks dumped bodies by the
dozens into a mass grave. Elsewhere, people pulled a box filled
with bodies along a road, then used a mechanical front-loader to
lift the box and tip it into a large metal trash bin. South of the
capital, workers burned more than 2,000 bodies in a trash dump.

Survivors wave to a helicopterAP Photo/Francois Mori

The Red Cross estimates 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed. A
third of Haiti's 9 million people may be in need of aid. As many as
half of the buildings in the capital and other hard-hit areas were
damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the World Food Program
was providing high-energy biscuits and ready-to-eat meals to around
8,000 people "several times a day."

"Obviously, that is only a drop in the bucket in the face of
the massive need, but the agency will be scaling up to feed
approximately 1 million people within 15 days and 2 million people
within a month," he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she would go
to Haiti on Saturday to to inspect the damage and meet with
President Rene Preval and other officials. Clinton, who will travel
with USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah, said she wants to convey
"our long-term, unwavering support, solidarity and sympathies."

"There are going to be many difficult days ahead," said
President Barack Obama, speaking for the fourth time on the
disaster in three days.

The effort to get aid to the victims has been stymied by blocked
roads, congestion at the airport, limited equipment and other
obstacles. U.N. peacekeepers patrolling the capital said popular
anger was rising, warning aid convoys to add security to guard
against looting.

"People who have not been eating or drinking for almost 50
hours and are already in a very poor situation - if they see a
truck with something, or if they see a supermarket which has
collapsed, they just rush to get something to eat," U.N.
humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva.

Tom Osbeck, an Indiana missionary whose Protestant-run Jesus in
Haiti Ministry operates a school north of Port-au-Prince, said
nerves were becoming increasingly frayed.

"Even distributing food or water is very dangerous. People are
desperate and will fight to death for a cup of water," Osbeck
said.

Tempers flared at one of the capital's functioning gas stations
as drivers tried to jockey their dusty cars into line. An armed
guard brandishing a shotgun intervened to keep motorists from
coming to blows.

Grocery stores were looted clean soon after the quake, according
to Emilia Casella of the U.N. World Food Program. She said the WFP
would start handing out 6,000 tons of food aid recovered from a
damaged warehouse in the city's Cite Soleil slum and was preparing
shipments of enough ready-to-eat meals to feed 2 million Haitians
for a month.

Asked about the concern of frustration spilling into violence,
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said his peacekeepers, working
with Haitian police, "are now taking charge of law and order in
the city."

"I suspect there will be some frustrations felt by the general
population," he added. "We are very much concerned about that
kind of possibility and are taking all possible precautionary
measures. Until now, I think we have so far not seen major
problems."

The U.S. military has several hundred personnel on the ground,
including more than 100 troops from the U.S. 82nd Airborne
Division. Hundreds of sailors, meanwhile, pulled into
Port-au-Prince harbor on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.

Within hours, an 82nd Airborne rapid response unit was handing
out food, water and medical supplies from two cargo pallets outside
the airport, a helicopter lifted off with water to distribute, and
a reconnaissance chopper went searching for drop zones around the
capital to move out more aid. Soldiers said they expected more
supplies later in the day.

At the airport, foreigners waved their passports to guards as
they scrambled to escape the chaos by boarding the departing
flights.

"We've had people crying, people passing out," said Muriel
Sinai, 38, a nurse from Orlando, Fla.

Some 250 Americans were flown to New Jersey's McGuire Air Force
Base on three military planes. U.S. forces in control of the
airport initially blocked French and Canadians from boarding
planes, even though a French military aircraft stood by. They
lifted their cordon after protests from French and Canadian
officials.

The State Department said the U.S. death toll was six and
predicted it will rise.

The Cuban government said Friday it had allowed U.S. airplanes
to fly through its airspace as it evacuated wounded from Haiti, a
move which shaves 90 minutes off flights to Miami.

With hospitals devastated, more than 3,000 injured have been
treated in the Dominican Republic, including Haitian Senate
President Kelly Bastien. A border hospital in Jimani is
overflowing, while a trauma center in Santo Domingo requested blood
donations to keep up with demand.

In Port-au-Prince, some 100 people have died while waiting for
treatment at the offices of Doctors Without Borders, mission
director Stefano Zannini said by phone. Open fractures are the most
common injury, he said.

"I can see thousands of them walking in the streets, lost,
asking for help, asking for everything," he said.

There was good news too: surgeons performed a complicated
cesarean birth, Zannini said. "I am very proud to share with you
that we were able to save both the lives of the baby and the
mother."

An El Al Boeing 777 landed Friday with 250 Israeli medical
officers and nurses ready to set up a military field hospital. A
reconnaissance team set out to find a site for the 90-bed facility,
which will have a full surgical unit and the capacity to treat 100
patients at a time.

In front of the collapsed National Palace, thousands of homeless
in makeshift camps pleaded for help. Marimartha Syrel, a nurse,
said nobody had provided even water since Tuesday. "We can't cook
food. We can't do anything." The sidewalks were littered with
excrement left on paper plates.

"They are very hungry," said Rivia Alce, a 21-year-old street
vendor selling gum, cigarettes and rum. If no help comes, she said,
"we will die."

Nearby, a woman with a bowl of water on the sidewalk bathed a
naked girl without soap. Then she washed an elderly woman, naked
but for a sagging pair of white panties.

A block away, a dozen bodies lay bloated and uncovered on the
sidewalk - one of them with arms reaching out, as if begging for
release.

Rubble spilling over from collapsed buildings blocked downtown
traffic to all but pedestrians. People covered their faces with
scarves to shield themselves from dust and the stench of decay.
Small bands of young men and boys carrying machetes roamed the
streets.

"They are scavenging everything. What can you do?" said
53-year-old Michel Legros, who was waiting for heavy equipment to
excavate his house, where he added that seven relatives were
buried. "I know some of them died."

Damage in Port-au-Prince from earthquakeAP PhotoView full galleryA young injured earthquake survivor holds a piece of bread in a makeshift shelter in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti Tuesday. (AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo)Ricardo Arduengo/ASSOCIATED PRESSA makeshift camp fopr quake survivors in Port-au-Prince on January 14.AP PhotoIn this image provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, a Coast Guard C-130 Hercules fixed-wing conducts an over flight assessment above a shipping port in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010, after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010.Sondra-Kay Kneen/ASSOCIATED PRESSPeople stand on rubble along Delmas road the day after an earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on Tuesday.AP Photo/Jorge CruzInjured people sit along Delmas road the day after an earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on Tuesday.AP Photo/Jorge CruzDebris lays in the street after an earthquake along the Delmas road in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake, the largest ever recorded in the area, rocked Haiti on Tuesday.AP Photo/Jorge CruzThis photo provided by Medecins Sans Frontieres shows wounded people gathered at the office of Medecins Sans Frontieres in Port-au-Prince, Haiti Wednesday Jan. 13, 2010. Haitians piled bodies along the devastated streets of their capital Wednesday after the strongest earthquake hit the poor Caribbean nation in more than 200 years crushed thousands of structures, from schools and shacks to the National Palace and the U.N. peacekeeping headquarters.AP Photo/Medecins Sans Frontieres, Stefano ZanniniHaiti's National Palace is seen damaged in Port-au-Prince, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010. A powerful earthquake struck the country on Tuesday.AP Photo/Jorge CruzPeople running past rubble of a damaged building in Port-au-Prince, Haiti after the largest earthquake ever recorded in the area hit on Tuesday, Jan. 12.Associate Press Photo/Carel PedreThis map of Haiti shows the location of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake which struck Tuesday afternoon. The red color shows the area of most intensity.Map courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey